Feel like a woman

If I had bigger breasts, I’d feel more like a woman.

Perhaps, if every time I stood naked in front of a mirror, they hung like melons, or stood, perky, ripe for plucking,  my eyes would be drawn downward, to an actual cleavage, the valley of my breasts; perhaps, if every time I stepped out in public, men refused to meet my eye, but had no problems reaching out to touch, feel, squeeze, poke; perhaps, if instead of a barely there 32A, I was a 34C or a 36B- I swear, the only time I really remember I’m a woman is when the underwire of my push-up bra begins to hurt my chest:  the red lines on my skin when I take it off every evening feel like a reassurance- I’ve played my part- understood that beauty is pain, endured, and emerged triumphant, if bruised.

A real woman. 

Barely two weeks ago, a woman asked my mother: “In which class is your son?”

Don’t blame her for the misgendering: in a small nook in rural Kerala, a flat-chested, loose t-shirt &  jeans clad, short haired, skinny person, clambering ungracefully over rocks to get to the river bed would hardly be thought a girl, much less a woman.

It’s only the second time in my life that this has happened: the first was a quarter century ago.  Coincidentally- or perhaps not- I was similarly clad and shorn.

I shoved my “Dream Princess Barbie”- all golden curls and lace nightgown- in the face of my befuddled questioner and demanded: “Can’t you see my Barbie? Of course I’m a girl!”

I don't have a Barbie, metaphorical or real, to show the smiling ammachi, and I doubt that if I suddenly take off my shirt to present my non-silicon enhanced, very real, very small breasts, it would be considered proof of my womanliness. Quite the opposite, I imagine.

Amma is affronted by her question, I am merely bemused.

Not being transgender or gender fluid, I can afford the bemusement afforded by the occasional misgendering- it’s not systemic oppression or daily fear for my life, it’s not leaving me out on the street.

Yes, I can afford the bemusement.

In my own small way, this bemusement is hard won.  Between the eleven year old confronted by a question that feels offensive, feels wrong, makes me feel bad and the thirty six year old giggling about the same question in the back of a beat up car, is this:

At thirteen, having to reappraise everything I thought I knew- being “cool” no longer meant being as un-girly as you could- the one that wasn’t allowed to be scared of spiders or cry when she fell from a tree she’d climbed as a dare- no, being "cool" was now a sudden inability to negotiate fences without help,  drink a pepsi without a straw or open a door. Softness was in, “tomboy” was just pathetic.

At sixteen, being betrayed- by my own body - that grew up to be the anti-thesis of Barbie-  flat-chested, angular, hirsute. Being marooned, between the well intentioned indifference of family that drilled into me the values of “inner beauty” – “gentleness”, “self –control”- while having to negotiate the capricious sea  that is social acceptance without the raft that I found was increasingly necessary- you may be the smartest girl in the class, but they all still want the number of the prettiest.

But hey, I coped:  picked a side- smart was easier; “pretty” would clearly not be happening and besides, picked up two things that have stood me in fantastic stead- self-deprecatory humour and a unshakeable sense of my own moral superiority.  

That doesn’t sound great, does it?

Believe me, it absolutely is. Breasts sag, self righteousness remains.

Then I moved cities, met a few girly-girls who were appropriately horrified that I’d never waxed or gotten my eyebrows shaped, and that, in fact, to quote one, “had never learnt to be a girl”.

Reader, I capitulated.

Crumbled like a cookie left out too long.

I couldn’t take my eyes off my lips, the first time I wore lipstick. 

It was like magic.

I was a real girl.

Fifteen years after this momentous event, I know what this was- this complex, messy, becoming.  I can now say things like “gender is performance” and know it to be as true as the fact that the size of my breasts  do make me a woman, as much as they don’t.   I know that smart is sexy, and sexy isn't all that important even though they constantly tell you it is, because universal fuckability is not essential to being human.  I feel like saying, hey, I've got your number, I've figured out your bag of tricks:  you with your glossy magazines and airbrushed photos, your fifteen ways to make sure your man never looks at another woman, all of which involve me making myself into something I'm not,  because what I am, apparently, is never enough; your fairness creams, and hey, look, two guys are getting a couple of million dollars to make vaginas smell like peaches.  Yeah, I've got your number, world, and I'm not in line outside that door you guard so vigilantly: the one that's marked with those neat little line drawings of skirts and pants and the little book of rules that you hand out to those deemed worthy- boys don't cry, girls are sugar and spice and all that's nice.
I don't need your permission to be let into the room of my own humanity.

Edited: 22nd Jan.

“No she’s not asking what you’re gonna tell your daughter /She’s asking what you’re gonna teach your son”/ Andrea Gibson "Blue Blanket"

Cross posting something I wrote on FB.

Dear parents

When you teach your daughter that "good girls" stay at home after 7 pm, you are teaching your son that women/girls who are out of their homes after that time are "bad", and that there are times of day and night that are exclusively male.

When you teach your daughter that "good girls dress appropriately", you are teaching your son that "bad girls" dress "inappropriately".

When you teach your daughter that she shouldn't be seen in (clubs, bars, on the road after dark, at a movie hall, in a restaurant with an unrelated male), you are teaching your son that there are places he shouldn't expect to see women; that there are places that are exclusively male.

When you teach your daughter that she should fear strange men, you are teaching your son that that its "normal" and "correct" if strange women look at him with fear.

When you teach your daughter to avoid confrontation as much as possible as a method of staying safe, you are teaching your son that the "normal" behaviour for women is to avoid confrontation no matter how severe the harassment or injustice they are facing.

When you teach your daughter that whether or not she is a victim of violence, is dependent on her behaviour, you are teaching your son that violence is a "normal" response to women who do not conform to these arbitrary standards.

When you teach your son how to fix your car, but teach your daughter how to make tea, you are teaching your son that there are certain kinds of jobs he can and SHOULD do, and teaching your daughter which jobs she can and MUST do. Frankly, both skills are necessary for both your children.

When you teach your daughter that the only men who will respect her are "brother/father/husband", you are teaching your son that the only women he needs to respect are "mother/sister/wife" and all other women will fall into the good/bad category (see above) and can be treated as such.


When you teach your daughter that despite the degree(s) that she has worked so hard to earn, she should be prepared to give it all up to marry and raise children, you are teaching your son that his hard work will always have more value than his sister's. Do you think it's a coincidence that across the board women are paid lesser than men for the same kind of work?

When you teach your daughter that "men will be men" with all that it implies, you are teaching your son that "men will be men" is a valid excuse for sexist, misogynist and ultimately inhuman behaviour.

So think carefully, and think hard, what are the "values" that you are imparting to your daughter, because those are the "values" that you will be imparting to your son.